


Kid Gloves Not Included

by SylphofScript



Series: Everyday I'm Drabblin' [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Drabble, kind of, mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-09 09:24:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10409001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylphofScript/pseuds/SylphofScript
Summary: Stiles and Derek have a little talk while waiting for Scott to return. Reassurance is ensured.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I had a need to drabble and a single sentence to go on in my head (”You don’t mean that, I know you don’t.”) and this was the result. Quality is questionable. Intended to be expanded upon, but then scrapped. Along with the whole story, for now.
> 
> Originally posted over on [my Tumblr](sylphofscript.tumblr.com), as they typically get things a roughly month ahead to stew on, because AO3 feels like playing the big boys.

How he got here, Derek couldn’t tell you.

How he found himself in a half-empty room, sitting next to Stiles Stilinski, devolving the conversation into a topic he avoided like the Black Plague, Derek wouldn’t know. He didn’t know. All he knew was that he  _was_  sitting in a half-empty room next to Stiles Stilinksi, waiting for Scott and Kira to return with the promised materials and speaking words he usually only heard in movies and read in books.

“Don’t you ever just wish it could have been you instead of him,” Derek says, referring to Scott and his fateful bite, but also something unrelated to Stiles completely, “just so you don’t always have to deal with the after? The whole _what-if_ bullshit?”

Derek can feel Stiles looking at him. Calculating. They’d been discussing rebuilding, because that’s what Derek was doing. Rebuilding. This flat, to be specific, because it was rundown and Derek enjoyed fixing things up after realizing it gave him an endgame he could deal with. And, now, they’d gotten onto more feely topics. How? That’s what Derek was asking himself, in the back of his mind.

This was not what he’d wanted to talk about, but here they were.

“Are you suicidal?” Stiles asks, without any of the careful tones the words had always come with the previous times it had been asked. Thankfully, the answer has always been the same, even if the question came without its usual kid gloves this time around. 

“No,” Derek replies shortly. “I have an obligation to my family, and to Cora. One that I want to fulfil with everything that I can. I have a reason to live, even if sometimes I think it would have been better if I hadn’t and someone else had taken my place.”

The sudden silence that follows Derek’s words allows him to pinpoint a leak somewhere in the building. That, or Scott left the faucet dripping. Again.

“You don’t mean that,” Stiles finally says after a long moment. “I know you don’t.”

Derek wants to wring his neck. He also wants to grab his shoulder and crush him in a hug. The conflicting emotions war in his chest, and he’s too busy struggling for coherence to respond. This doesn’t stop Stiles.

“I know it’s all pretty fucked up. Hell, I was only a kid when I heard what had happened to your family, but even I knew at the time that it was a tragedy that would change anyone’s life. I thought you were a big kid and all, at sixteen, but I knew that wasn’t an  _adult_.”

Derek can’t respond to that. He doesn’t know how to.

“Survivor’s guilt sucks, man, but look at you, you’re—”

“What do you know about survivor’s guilt, Stiles?” Derek asks him sharply, rounding and staring into his eyes. He doesn’t even flinch.

“A lot, actually,” he replies, taking the challenge in Derek’s question and wielding it like a knife. His pupils are black pinpoints in circles of shifting brown. Derek doesn’t look away, because Stiles won’t first. “Maybe I didn’t lose my whole family thanks to my batshit uncle and his inability to think ahead and realize potential disastrous mistakes, but I know what it’s like to lose parts of your world and think you could have done something to change it.”

Derek knows what he’s talking about, because how couldn’t he? He’s known Stiles for years now, and he’s lived in the same town for longer. “How could you feel that way? You had no hand in your mother’s death, it was a medical condition.”

Stiles—despite himself, Derek can tell—flinches over the mention, and Derek reminds himself to be more subtle every once in a while. “Try telling that to a ten-year-old with ADHD that thinks he gave his mom too hard of a time while she was alive.”

He’s inching around the words he wants to say, but Derek doesn’t call him out. It’s not a conversation they’re ready to have. Not yet.

Instead, Derek pushes his back straight against the wall they’re both sitting beside and scrubs a hand up his face, pressing his fingers into his brow bone with a sigh. Mutual angst wasn’t something he was used to, and he didn’t have the people skills he needed to fake it until he made it. Especially not with Stiles, who’s been around long enough to call him out on his bullshit without needing a lie detector.

“It’s alright, Derek,” Stiles tells him. Weight shifts onto Derek’s shoulders, and the smell of Stiles is suddenly engulfing him, telling Derek that an arm had just been slung around him in an attempt of comfort. He drops his hand and tries not to give Stiles a pitiful look, but he’s not sure he manages at all. “Jeez, don’t look at me like that,” Stiles says, looking a little sheepish for reasons Derek can’t decipher. “Hasn’t anyone told you that it’s alright?”

“Yes,” Derek says hastily, then hesitates. “It’s different when it’s coming from someone who gets it.”

The expression on Stiles’ face dissolves into a frown. Derek stops watching and tilts his head back against the wall, eyes on the dark ceiling. 

“It’s alright, Derek,” Stiles says again, slower. “It really is.”

And, for once, Derek can’t help but believe it.


End file.
